


Brush, Braid, Touch

by Allekha



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Hair Brushing, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 21:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14529189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allekha/pseuds/Allekha
Summary: A lot of people have touched Victor's hair over the years: his parents, Lilia, Georgi, Yuuri.





	Brush, Braid, Touch

Mama brushed his hair every morning. Get dressed, sit down while Mom made breakfast, wait for Mama to start running the brush through his hair. She always complained about his squirming, telling him to sit still, that he'd go to school with messy hair if he didn't, but he only did it because it made her take longer. He liked the feeling of the bristles gliding over his hair, the way she ran her hand over it when she was finished and declared him fit to leave the house.

It was always Mama who did it, and Mama who cut his hair. Once, when she was sick, Mom had tried brushing it instead, but she jerked the brush too roughly and didn't stop when it caught a tangle to undo it with her fingers. Victor refused to let her get near him with a brush ever again.

—

There was no particular reason why Victor decided to learn how to brush his own hair – he just felt like it, one sleepy weekend morning. So he got out his brush, and instead of going to Mama, pulled a chair up to the mirror above his dresser and started to brush.

It took a lot longer than when Mama did it, and it didn't feel as good. He had to figure out how to move the brush properly around his head, how hard to press it against the scalp, how to pull apart the occasional tangle. But eventually, it looked like it should, and he proudly went to show his parents.

And then the next morning he brought Mama the brush again. "I thought you were old enough to do it yourself now," she said, looking confused.

"You do it better."

"So practice," she said, but she gave in anyway. For once, Victor didn't squirm.

—

Victor started to refuse the haircuts. Mama was skeptical, but she stopped asking and let him grow it out. It looked prettier like this, falling against his face and down his neck. A girl at his school who used to take skating lessons with him – though not for a long time, not since he'd gotten so much better than her – taught him how to braid the strands.

When Yakov became his coach, Victor went to live with him and Lilia, since it was too much time back and forth otherwise. Lilia, it turned out, was not only a great (and terrifying, in the good way) ballet instructor, she was also good at doing hair for performances.

The first time she came with them to a competition, instead of letting him keep his hair loose, she sat him down and pulled it into some kind of fancy braid. There were hardly even any frizzies; every strand lay smooth and neat. It was like magic.

Occasionally, Victor even asked her to put it up for him on ordinary days. She never said no, just took his offered brush and sat behind him, started to smooth it down. The way her hands felt in his hair was even better than when Mama had brushed it.

—

Yakov had many good points. He was an excellent coach. He had managed to persuade Victor's parents that he should focus on skating instead of school, that he was good enough to be a professional athlete.

Unlike Lilia, however, he had no idea what to do with a hairbrush. So after their divorce, Victor mostly did his hair for competitions himself.

Only mostly, because one afternoon Georgi had been crying about his most recent break-up and going on about how long and lovely his girlfriend's hair had been, and said, "And she always asked me to do something with it, and let me comb it for hours, and I'll never get to touch it again!"

He looked like he was about to burst into tears for the third time this week. "You can braid mine if you want," Victor said.

He hadn't expected much, but it turned out that Georgi had a gentle touch and his sense of aesthetics for hairstyles was slightly less dramatic than that of his makeup.

—

He cut his hair.

People were still attracted to its color, and he had to endure endless questions as to _why_ , but they almost completely stopped asking to touch it.

—

Yuuri Katsuki asked to touch it while Victor was trying to maneuver him to Yuuri's hotel room after the most incredible night he could remember having in ages.

"I've always wanted to," Yuuri said, words slurring. He reached a hand up instead of co-operating with walking down the hall. "It's so pretty."

Victor bit back a gasp as Yuuri's fingers combed through it, sending pinpricks of pleasure down his neck. He was so disappointed when the hand fell away.

—

Yuuri Katsuki did not show up at Worlds. So Victor went drinking with Chris instead.

"I wanted to see Yuuri," he complained, slumping on the bar's counter.

"Poor Victor," Chris teased, and a second later there were fingers ruffling his hair. Not as good as Yuuri's had been, but it was nice, and Victor turned his head into it. "There's always next season."

That was months and months away. Victor still wasn't sure he wanted to skate it. (He was going to, probably. What else was he going to do?)

Chris was a good friend and skimmed his fingers over Victor's hair again.

—

A lot of people had touched Victor's hair over the years, his parents and stylists and many others, but none of them had ever just poked him right in the hair whorl.

Yuuri, as ever, surprised him.

Victor wanted him to do more than poke it. He wanted Yuuri to comb his fingers through it like he had that night, or grab it and pull them into a kiss.

Not today. But things were going well. Yuuri had let Victor comb his hair for _Onsen on Ice_ ; surely someday soon, he would brush Victor's.

**Author's Note:**

> Written a while back for a prompt about hair brushing (because how could I resist a prompt like that?). Exactly 1k as my word processor counts it.


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